History Today

The Cold War forged new international relationships in which physical distance seemed overcome by ideological proximity. In North Korea, East Germany found a fellow traveller – and a fellow victim.

Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women and God’s Own Gentlewoman bring the real world of medieval women out of the margins.

Meant to live a life of perfect peacefulness and contemplation, in reality monks were human and fallible. How violent could life in the medieval cloister be?

The often overlooked life of Robert Fergusson, Edinburgh’s unofficial poet laureate and Scotland’s voice.

Uruguay was the only nation where fighting a duel in defence of honour was perfectly legal for most of the 20th century. Why?

How a lost ballad detailing the Inquisition’s sentencing of 28 alleged Basque witches spread a witchcraft panic through 17th-century Spain.

The best historical novels infer aspects of lives of which no trace remains. George Garnett starts awarding grades.

One of Greek tragedy’s ‘big names’, Euripides survives largely in scraps and fragments. What can 78 new lines from Ino and Polyidus reveal?

Surrealism – as formulated in André Breton’s manifesto a century ago in October 1924 – is regarded as one of the First World War’s artistic legacies. What are the others?

On 9 October 1771 masterpieces of Dutch art destined for Catherine the Great sank with the Vrouw Maria off the coast of Finland.